by bell hooks
That same spirit of inclusive tokenism is present in a New Yorker piece by Michael Berube titled “Public Academy.” Underneath the title there is this declaration: “A new generation of black thinkers is becoming the most dynamic force in the American intellectual arena since the fifties.” Berube, in what is essentially a series of book reviews, frames his piece as an overview of the impact of black intellectuals. That impact is registered not by the significance of our work but rather in terms of our current popularity, particularly in relation to the books he is reviewing. While Berube does not acknowledge any relation between my “public intellectual” work and feminist movement, he does register that feminism is a major topic of my writing. On all matters in the two recent books of mine he writes about, Berube finds me engaging in “sweeping indiscriminate critique” with the exception being my critical thoughts on feminism. He contends that I am at my “best in debates over the meaning and future of feminism.” Of course, part of white male privilege is that he is in no way required to contextualize his basis for judgment and evaluation. Not only was I the token woman in the piece, I was apparently the only thinker whose ideas Berube vehemently disagreed with, so much so that a fellow black woman writer commented that I am represented as the irrational “strident lunatic.” Of course, the irony of this piece is that the books he reviews do not represent the type of work I have done within women’s studies that has made a meaningful critical intervention. A similar overview of the work of black intellectuals published in the LA Weekly made no mention of my work even though I spent hours with reporter Sam Fullwood talking “ideas.” His agenda seems to have been sifting through our extensive conversation to ferret out critical comments about Cornel West. As in other instances, the focus of attention is really on a public discourse about black intellectuals that is taking place between black men.
When The Chronicle of Higher Education sent Courtney Leatherman, a white woman reporter, to interview me, I hoped to finally engage in a discussion that would focus more on ideas. At no point in our conversation, which went on for hours, did the reporter indicate that she was working on a cover story. After hours of discussing “ideas,” Leatherman was welcomed to stay for lunch and observe other parts of my life. When her piece appeared as the cover story in a May issue of the newspaper, ideas were not mentioned. While I consistently shared with Leatherman that I did not consider myself a “black feminist” but rather an advocate of feminist politics her cover story carried the heading “A Name for Herself: When black feminism needed a voice, bell hooks was born.” Apparently, Leatherman’s tape recorder lost the part where I shared that I had begun to use the name bell hooks long before I became involved with feminist movement. Indeed, there are so many lies and distortions of our conversation in her piece that it was mind-boggling.
There was no evidence of a discussion of feminist politics and ideas, only anecdotal references to the details shared during lunch. Many colleagues had called me to share their perception that Leatherman was clearly fishing for dirt to use in her tabloid-like piece. Evidently, not finding the necessary dirt she painted a colorful imaginative portrait gleaned more from her stereotypes and fantasies. I first heard that the piece had been published when interviewed by a reporter from the Times Educational Supplement (London). When I asked about the piece she frowned and commented: “She seemed not to have read any of your work.” This refusal to critically consider the work characterizes much of the mainstream public attention I am now receiving. For most of my writing life, I had not been open to talking with the press, to having photos taken. It was the desire to reach a wider audience that motivated me to be more open. This has been a mixed blessing. On one hand, the attention increases the number of readers who know that the work exists. It enables me to seek advances, which I never had for the earlier work. On the other hand, it often misrepresents both me and the work.
Since much of the work I have done in the last few years within feminist theory as well as cultural studies has focused on the significance of representation within structures of domination, the impact of images as they reinforce racist and sexist stereotypes, I am painfully aware of the ways my image is now used to undermine the academic work I am most committed to doing. In part, I see the misrepresentation of this work as part of an overall antifeminist backlash within mass media, where the work of progressive feminist thinkers is often distorted and made to appear trivial or ridiculous. When individual women set themselves up as “thought police” monitoring the feminist classroom and reporting back to the mainstream world its problems and excesses, few uninformed readers speculate as to why it is the feminist classroom that is under surveillance and not other pedagogical settings. Indeed, if every academic discipline were subject to the harsh scrutiny with which critics examine both women’s studies and other nontraditional programs and departments we would all be compelled to acknowledge that all disciplines have their teachers who are flawed, biased, and protective of their space. Concurrently, since I have strayed from the traditional academic path and continued to pursue writing as a primary vocation and teaching as a job, a choice made evident by my attempt, after first doing the traditional training and scholarship common to my discipline, to write for a more general audience, I am an easy target to critique for conservatives who want there to be homogeneous thought and action among professors in specific disciplines.
For some time now, I have felt the scope of critical thinking and writing by black Americans threatened by the fact that practically all black writers seek some type of affiliation with academic institutions for sustained employment. It is precisely because common structures of evaluation and advancement in various academic jobs require homogeneous thought and action, judged usually from a conservative standpoint, that academia is often less a site for open-minded creative study and engagement with ideas and more a space of repression that dissenting voices are so easily censored and/or silenced. Within the academy, individuals from marginalized groups are more likely to be subject to a quality of scrutiny that curtails freedom of speech and thought. This is one reason it is dangerous for us to allow academic institutions to remain the primary site where our ideas are developed and exchanged.
Since my undergraduate years I have longed to leave the academy. For years I have tried to live modestly so that I can one day survive without having to work as an academic. In the last few years that has been possible, but I stay in the academy in part because I want students to know the value of education and to believe that they can have critical consciousness even as they work within existing structures to gain knowledge and prepare themselves for a life where much of their time will be spent working. I believe that as a working-class black girl growing up in the racial apartheid of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, I would not be doing the work I do, the thinking and writing I love, were it not for the many neighbors (mostly older black women) who gave me literature to read that broadened my horizons and the teachers and librarians who enabled me to pursue my longing for knowledge. Their generosity was an example to me. I endeavor to teach students that same generosity and care. Like my teachers, I do not simply hope that students will learn necessary facts and details. I hope that they will learn to think critically in ways that strengthen their capacity to be self-actualized.
Much of the writing I do is grounded in my ongoing political commitment to ending domination in all its forms. I remain particularly concerned about the struggles to end racism and sexism. The way I write (style, content), the choices I make regarding subject matter reflect these commitments. Concurrently, I try to preserve a place of creativity where I can think and write on any subject, irrespective of whether it will enhance freedom struggle globally. It takes effort to lead a balanced creative and intellectual life. There are so many aspects of black and/or female experience that have never been explored.
Sometimes I think we need progressive educational centers in every state to nurture the production of ideas about groups for whom discrimination and unjust distribution o
f resources (and that includes education) has left huge gaps in our understanding. It is the desire to think and write more, to fill some of these gaps that informs my desire to leave the academy—to think and write on the subjects of my choice, in the manner that I wish to write, in whatever voice I choose. There is so much emphasis on asserting a one-dimensional “voice” in academic life. I enjoy writing about many subjects in different ways. Not only is this a way to claim decolonized subjectivity, it enriches my capacity for self-actualization. I hope that students will know the way to do formal academic writing and other ways of writing if they wish to have a broader audience. The intellectual life I have chosen is rewarding and deeply satisfying. I began to talk more about the blessings such a life can bring because it seemed to me that by only calling attention to the pitfalls of academic life, I and other colleagues were not setting a good example for students and peers.
To me intellectual life is fundamentally different from academic careerism. I feel especially fortunate that I have been able to pursue an academic career in which I have had to make minimal compromise to achieve my desired goals. By the standards of academic careerism, it is not a sign of major achievement to be teaching in a huge urban state college that is predominantly nonwhite. Indeed, prominent black academics shared with me their sense that I would be sabotaging my career to make such a move. I came to teach at a state college after years of teaching at two private institutions—Yale and Oberlin. My choice was informed by a desire to spend the years I have left in academia working with students of color, many of whom come from class backgrounds similar to my own. These are students who are often deemed unimportant by academic elites. Indeed, when Courtney Leatherman interviewed me she spent time with an undergraduate student I had encouraged to take my graduate class. Though Leatherman talked with this student, who is a black immigrant from a working-class background who works full-time to support herself while attending school, in her eagerness to paint a portrait of me as this seductive teacher whose students are slaves of love, Leatherman never mentions her conversation with this student. She quotes students from Yale and Oberlin, all of whom were dismayed by the way she mocked them and distorted the information they shared with her. All the students who talked with her were able to experience firsthand the power of mass media to distort truth, to misrepresent-represent them. Although I have received much mainstream attention this past year, this piece was the only instance where a reporter aggressively distorted information and at times just lied.
My initial response was to critique myself for being so open, for being willing to talk to the press. Then Dennis Green, at the time a black male colleague at City College teaching a course on the media and representation, reminded me that given the intactness of systems of domination, if I and the work I do were merely being celebrated in the press it would be a cause for alarm. As he put it, “You would need to look at yo’self and ask what I am doing wrong.” Given the mounting backlash of conservative forces, covert and overt attacks on freedom of speech, this is a time when dissenting progressive voices both in and outside the academy need to cherish the spaces of open dialogue, the audiences that enable us to publish—to gain material reward, and most importantly, to have the joy of knowing our voices are heard and welcomed.
catalyst and connection
writers and readers
Writers rarely talk about the value of a reading audience. We like to imagine that we would all be merrily writing away even if there was no public longing to hear our words. I began my writing as a poet. Like most poets in a society where poetry is most often read silently and in private, I never imagined an audience for my poems. They were written to be read by me to a few intimate souls equally enchanted by lyricism. I was never compelled to take the stage at poetry readings nor was I inclined to scatter copies of my poems around for various readers to partake of them. Yet when I became engaged with feminist thinking and feminist movement the questions of whom we speak to and for became paramount.
Anyone writing feminist theory at the peak of contemporary feminist movement considered the question of audience. Critical interventions by women of color called attention to the politics of location and the question of perspective. In my early work I critiqued the ways in which the words chosen to talk about feminist movement indicated that when the category woman was evoked it was made synonymous with white women; that when feminist theorists talked about commonalities between women and blacks black women were excluded from the former. The challenge that all progressive feminist theorists faced was to find a language that could give expression to the specificity of experience and yet remain inclusive. We were all accustomed to using language in ways that perpetuated existing structures of domination, hierarchies of race, sex, and class.
Initially, I was primarily motivated to write feminist theory that would critique racism within feminist movement and call attention to sexism in black life along with the need to eradicate it. To achieve both these desired ends I had to formulate complex accountings for the intersections of race and gender, which needed unconventional forms of expression. I had to write with the trust that there would be readers willing to hear these different wordings, as well as the new insights they conveyed. When I wrote my first book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, I chose the subtitle with the direct intention of linguistically connecting our experience with feminist politics. Even though it had already become popular to speak of “black feminism” I chose not to use this phrase precisely because I did not want to support the notion of a racially distinct and separate-but-equal feminism. I wanted to make it clear that black women were primary to the making of feminist theory for everyone.
While I specifically wanted to address black women with this first book, I knew as well that racism and sexism directly targeted at us would never change if dominant groups (men and white women) did not learn more about black female experience. At that time, the vast majority of books about feminism were written by and about white women. The fact that these texts all focused on the experiences of a select group did not prevent me from learning from them. Concurrently, white women and other groups eager to learn about black female experience were open to reading the feminist theory I wrote. At times it provoked in readers many different feelings—anger, sadness, guilt, etc.—but they grappled with the material. Often I meet readers who tell me that they found a book of mine so disturbing that they had to put it away or that they kept getting mad and throwing it in the trash but that something would always make them return to it. Writing that addresses audiences in a new way provokes.
Sadly, we are moving further and further away from the revolutionary feminist call for an inclusive approach to feminist thinking and writing that we dreamed would ultimately transform all writing in our culture. Nowadays it is often assumed that if a black woman writer of nonfiction concentrates on black experience and/or race, she is only writing for black female readers. Of course the irony is that a white woman can concentrate solely on white experience and/or race and she will be perceived as writing a book for a general audience. Racism creates a mindset that allows everyone to see white experience as the “norm,” “the universal,” and more particularly as the most significant. This last aspect is most important. It creates profound blind spots as it does not allow for the possibility that understanding black female experience might illuminate in a complex manner the experiences of white and other nonblack women or that these groups might learn vital information that would be meaningful for their lives. A perfect example of this is the way in which women of color, in particular black women, insist that white women active in feminist thinking and feminist movement confront the issue of racism. This intervention truly transformed feminist scholarship and gave renewed energy to contemporary activism.
Although a book may specifically address the particular experience of any group it can have meaningful resonance for folks outside the group. Throughout my involvement in feminist movement even when I was most adamantly challengin
g the racism in the theory and practice, I was sharing that I had also learned so much from reading the work of white women peers and nonblack women of color. In a short essay I wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education I critiqued the reluctance or refusal on the part of some women students to read male writers they deemed sexist; black students doing the same when they considered a writer racist, etc. I was not urging students to ignore the blind spots biases create but rather to both critically interrogate them while also taking from a work the ideas and beliefs that transcend those biases. Of course nonwhite readers are always being challenged to look beyond the biases of white writers to appreciate the substance of their work, yet rarely are white readers encouraged to believe they should do the same if the writer is nonwhite.